I go out on my screened porch to read, but that's a difficult thing to do! There is such distraction! There is the blue bird, flying from a tree branch to the ground, and then to a gutter on the house, and then back to the ground, and then to another tree branch. What a beautiful, bright, primary-color blue he is! And there is the cardinal who lands on the butterfly bush, only 10 feet from where I am sitting! What bright, primary-color red! And there are the gold finches, dive bombing to land at the bird bath. What bright, primary-color yellow!

What is the more important gift: the reading, or the distraction? Certainly, it is the distraction that reminds me of God’s presence. (It’s like the old joke: how many burning bushes did Moses walk past before he finally noticed one?!)

It makes me think of an experiment that the Washington Post video taped. On a Friday morning this past January, a violinist, dressed in a sweat shirt and jeans and a baseball cap, laid his violin case open on the floor next to him and began to play during rush hour in the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by, many talking on their cell phones. Twenty-seven people dropped money in the case (a grand total of $32); nearly all of them were on the run. No one stopped to applaud any of the music. It was not until six minutes into the performance that the first person stopped. He looked at the time on his cell phone, and must have figured he had three minutes, because that's how long he stayed before leaving. Later, a small child insistently pulled on his mother's hand, wanting to stop to watch and listen, but the mother dragged him away in her hurry. Directly across from the violinist was a newspaper kiosk where people lined up, sometimes five or six people at a time. Not a single one of them turned around to pay attention to the musician.

Who was playing in the subway station? It was Joshua Bell, who is probably the greatest violinist alive, playing Bach and Schubert on his $3.5 million Stradivarius!

I wonder what you and I have missed lately, because we have not allowed ourselves to be distracted?

It is often in the distractions that we have the best chance of noticing God's presence.